iPhone/iPad iOS music making app round-up: Week 29

Vintage hardware goes mobile

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Old meets new

There’s something of a nostalgic feel to the round-up this week, as music technology legends Fairlight and Kraftwerk introduce apps and there’s an update for another that emulates Roland’s TR-808/909 drum machines and TB-303 synth. There’s also another DJing release and a couple of MIDI controllers.

Fairlight Instruments Fairlight £5.99

Not only did Fairlight announce a 30th anniversary edition of the CMI at NAMM 2011, but it also unveiled an iOS version. It sounds sort of ridiculous, but this gives you all the sounds from the original CMI IIX floppy disk library and a taste of the CMI interface. You can buy the in-app upgrade to the Pro version (which gives you more features) for $39.99.

Kraftwerk Kling Klang Machine, £5.49

A Kraftwerk iOS app sounds like the most natural thing in the world… and here it is. It’s a generative offering that uses your location as a data source, and gives you sequencing and mixing tools to play with. The demo video should help you to understand things a little better.

Xylio Future DJ, £1.19

The iOS DJing apps just keep on coming: this one features BPM detection, auto-syncing, effects, EQ, scratching and more. If you don’t want to mix manually, you can simply press a button and let Future DJ do it for you.

Audiorealism technoBox2, £2.99

The original technoBox offered 808 and 909-style drum machines and an emulation of a TB-303 synth. Version 2 ups the stakes by adding another one of each, improved sequencing, WAV export, sample import, a Performance screen, a redesigned FX panel and more.

Naughty Panther SimpleMidiPad £1.19

Compatibility: iPad (requires iOS 4.2 or later)

Naughty Panther is none another than Chris “Audio Damage” Randall, and this is his simple MIDI controller. It comprises four pads, each if which “sends X, Y, and Z MIDI control messages, with user-selectable destination addresses”. It works either with a cable (via the Camera Connection Kit) or wirelessly.

Kudzu Creative Group Koushion, £5.99

Compatibility: iPad (requires iOS 4.2 or later)

Another Tenori-on style app for the iPad, this lets you make music on a ‘tone matrix’. This provides a 16-step sequencer with a 2-octave range, and operates as a wireless MIDI controller. There are eight scenes/banks (these can be played in sequence or simultaneously, and each of these can be assigned to a separate MIDI channel.